Short Description
Students on the regional campus of a major research university where I teach often come warily to higher education. The community is conservative, blue-collar, post-industrial. The students know they need at least some college to succeed, but they have only a vague sense of what exactly "going to college" means, and how it differs from their educational experience to date. Working tentatively toward a pedagogy of place, this assignment sequence involves students in primary research on their urban environment: interviewing, drawing physical maps and use-maps, taking photographs and video, and doing archival research to document these lived spaces, and then working individually and in groups to consider how changes in these environments might have material effects on the people who inhabit or use those spaces. Using examples of my students' work, we'll consider how assignments like these, which emphasize (but never mention) civic participation and advocacy, more students toward an engaged sense of how they might become active members of the communties to which they belong.
The Assignments Project #1 - Multimedia assignments like photo essays and web pages create new kinds of narratives. For this essay, you will begin to tell the story of a place - a building in Mansfield, Ohio. You will instruct your audience about the part this building has played in the history and culture of Mansfield. (...more) Project #2 - Like your photo essay, an audio project creates a new kind of narrative, one in which people get to tell their own stories, and explain the meaning of places in their own lives and histories. For this essay, you will concentrate on collecting what other people have to say about the building you are documenting, and you will draw more conclusions about the part it has played in the history and culture of Mansfield. (...more)(Audio Essays) Project #3 - For your final 367.01 project, you will make a multimedia proposal for the future use of the building you are investigating. A proposal is a kind of argument. You want to persuade your audience that your ideas for the future of your building are worth pursuing. In a sense, you are an “advocate,” standing up for the people who will use the building and for its place in Mansfield’s future. (...more)
Short Description
Students on the regional campus of a major research university where I teach often come warily to higher education. The community is conservative, blue-collar, post-industrial. The students know they need at least some college to succeed, but they have only a vague sense of what exactly "going to college" means, and how it differs from their educational experience to date. Working tentatively toward a pedagogy of place, this assignment sequence involves students in primary research on their urban environment: interviewing, drawing physical maps and use-maps, taking photographs and video, and doing archival research to document these lived spaces, and then working individually and in groups to consider how changes in these environments might have material effects on the people who inhabit or use those spaces. Using examples of my students' work, we'll consider how assignments like these, which emphasize (but never mention) civic participation and advocacy, more students toward an engaged sense of how they might become active members of the communties to which they belong.
More resources
More information on this second-level writing course is available on the course web site: http://english.mansfield.ohio-state.edu/delagrange/36701
The Assignments
Project #1 - Multimedia assignments like photo essays and web pages create new kinds of narratives. For this essay, you will begin to tell the story of a place - a building in Mansfield, Ohio. You will instruct your audience about the part this building has played in the history and culture of Mansfield. (...more)
Project #2 - Like your photo essay, an audio project creates a new kind of narrative, one in which people get to tell their own stories, and explain the meaning of places in their own lives and histories. For this essay, you will concentrate on collecting what other people have to say about the building you are documenting, and you will draw more conclusions about the part it has played in the history and culture of Mansfield. (...more) (Audio Essays)
Project #3 - For your final 367.01 project, you will make a multimedia proposal for the future use of the building you are investigating. A proposal is a kind of argument. You want to persuade your audience that your ideas for the future of your building are worth pursuing. In a sense, you are an “advocate,” standing up for the people who will use the building and for its place in Mansfield’s future. (...more)